founding fathers

Charter school is pushing religious propaganda, group says

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Reigniting the church-and-state debate, a group in Washington is criticizing a charter school for teaching history with books embraced by the tea party movement, the Arizona Republic reports. Americans United for Separation of Church and State says the Heritage Academy in Mesa, Arizona, shouldn't be using two books by...
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But he's not even close to claiming top spot for most popular founding father name

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George Washington, America's first president, can claim 1,513 namesakes alive in the US today, according to a new WhitePages analysis , but that actually ranks fourth on the list of most popular Founding Father names. Second president John Adams tops the list with 9,893, while Revolutionary War financier...
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Peter Aldhous: Otherwise, don't expect DC's gridlock to change

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The political gridlock in DC can't seem to get much worse, and public opinion polls about Congress can't get much lower. At Medium , Peter Aldhous runs through the usual explanations—partisan media outlets, campaign donations run amok, gerrymandering, to name a few—but he thinks those fed up...
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Bruce Kraig argues that the founders would have loved these things

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Fact: The Founding Fathers did not eat hot dogs. They didn't exist at the time, and besides, "food connoisseurs Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin would have considered hot dogs to be the lowest of foods," writes culinary historian Bruce Kraig in the LA Times . But Kraig nonetheless...
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Historian Paul Pirie argues that the Founders fell short of their aims

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Americans adore their revolution, but former historian Paul Pirie doesn't think it was terribly successful—at least not if you judge it against countries like Canada (from whence Pirie hails) that kept their monarchies, or by its own stated goal of advancing life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness....
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Texas, 7 other states told they're staying in the union

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White House to Texas: You're staying in America. The Obama administration has officially rejected a petition signed by more than 125,000 people demanding that the Lone Star State be allowed to leave the union, the Houston Chronicle reports. Similar petitions from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, South...
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Louis Seidman: Why should long-dead white men be calling the shots?

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A Constitutional scholar has an announcement to make: That old document is obsolete. "Our obsession with the Constitution has saddled us with a dysfunctional political system, kept us from debating the merits of divisive issues, and inflamed our public discourse," writes Louis Michael Seidman in the New York ...
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Founding Fathers may have liked ObamaCare: Einer Elhauge

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Health insurance mandates—unconstitutional? That's what the opponents of ObamaCare are arguing , "but there’s a major problem with this line of argument: It just isn’t true," writes Einer Elhuage in The New Republic . In fact, the founding fathers passed more than one mandate in Congress...
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Republican hopeful maintains founding fathers fought slavery

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Michele Bachmann still thinks minimum wage needs a review—and she says John Quincy Adams was a founding father. Noting that Politifact says she’s gotten more “facts” wrong than any other GOP hopeful, George Stephanopoulos asked her if she wanted to “clear up” some past comments, like...
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You can't believe all you read online

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Between the current interest in America’s founders and a “willingness to believe” the Internet, political misquotes are flying these days, writes David A. Fahrenthold in the Washington Post . A look over the past two years of C-SPAN and the Congressional Record shows that politicians—including congressmen, senators, and...
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Washington, Hamilton would have hated you

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The Tea Party loves to claim solidarity with the founding fathers, as though they’d all endorse the current Republican agenda. (Remember this craziness ?) Well, not so fast, says historian Ron Chernow. “The truth is that the disputatious founders—who were revolutionaries, not choir boys—seldom agreed about...
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No more 'founding father' call to arms

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Decidedly odd Alabama Tea Party candidate Rick Barber has lost his bid for Congress even though his "aw-shucks racism and incoherent rantings" turned him into an internet sensation, notes Gawker. Barber lost the runoff election to his far more traditional GOP rival Martha Roby, who faces Dem Bobby Bright...
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Create your own version

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For your Independence Day time-wasting pleasure—and "because it's time to kick some Brit ass"—JibJab has updated its Founding Fathers riff with a 2010 take. Check it out above, or make your own version here.
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Chief executive runs a 'secular-socialist machine' from White House

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Newt Gingrich is defending—and, in fact, repeating—his assertion that President Obama is "the most radical president in American history." Only those in the "cultural elite" could possibly view his administration as moderate, he writes in the Washington Post . It is a "secular-socialist machine,"...
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He doesn't let her equivocate while naming her favorite founding father

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Glenn Beck called "Bullcrap" on Sarah Palin's first answer when he asked her to name her favorite founding father. He interjected with the comment when she responded, "Well, all of them, because they came collectively together with so much,” notes Talking Points Memo . She eventually settled on...
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Founding Fathers had abolition in mind, says pundit

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Glenn Beck today put his spin on a provision in the US Constitution that once counted slaves as three-fifths of a person, painting it as a tool by which Northern abolitionists meant eventually to outlaw the practice. An African-American caller took issue with Beck’s reliance on the founding fathers,...
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Mike Huckabee's decision was unfortunate, but just

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Mike Huckabee's mercy in granting clemency to cop killer Maurice Clemmons was horribly betrayed, but that's no reason to reject the very notion of clemency, writes Michael Gerson. Strong arguments in favor of the role clemency plays in the justice system were made at the time of the Founding Fathers,...
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We aren't medieval subjects serving feudal lords and kings

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Americans everywhere ought to applaud 10-year-old Will Phillips, who told his teacher to "go jump off a bridge" after doing what we all should do: criticizing the Pledge of Allegiance. Phillips argued that because gay marriage isn’t legal, there isn’t “liberty and justice for all”—...
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Long-ignored financial records a 'treasure trove,' historians say

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Fitting enough for the guy who ended up on the dollar bill, George Washington seems to have tracked every buck that crossed his path. The first president not only left scores of diaries and letters reflecting his views, but also assiduously documented his financial transactions. The result? A treasure trove...
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Rules are being bent to expand executive power, senator writes

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The Obama administration is using its many policy “czars” to skirt the accountability and transparency established by the founding fathers, writes Kay Bailey Hutchison in the Washington Post. The administration has an “unprecedented” 32 czar positions, and “unfortunately,” the senator from Texas writes, “virtually no...
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